


Washing Machine Heart

by Fwizz101



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, M/M, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, everyone who dies is a random person dw, offscreen death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 22:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30028956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fwizz101/pseuds/Fwizz101
Summary: In which Sakusa Kiyoomi meets a strange customer at Komori Cleaners.
Relationships: Minor Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru - Relationship, Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 65





	1. Komori Cleaners

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song by Mitski, of course, but it has little bearing on the actual plot...
> 
> Please excuse me if the Kansai dialect "parallel accent" in English isn't quite right. I was too lazy to reference the dictionary to see which words are actually different in kansai-ben.

Kiyoomi, on the whole, likes his job. He enjoys wiping down the machines and counters at the end of his shift. He appreciates the flexible hours that work around his class schedule. He tolerates the polite chatter that patrons toss his way while they wait for their laundry to finish up. Most of all, he gets a sense of satisfaction from cleaning; even if his family didn’t own the laundromat he works at, he would certainly be the best candidate for the position.

It’s been about four months since he started working at Komori Cleaners, so he knows who the regulars are. One of them is a university student in a year above him. She bemoans the lack of a laundry unit in her apartment while steadfastly refusing to buy a mini washing machine. He doesn’t ask why.

“ _Ano ne,_ Kiyoomi-san?” Like most people, she hesitates to address him by his first name, but all of the employees are either a Komori or a Sakusa, so there’s no other way to tell them apart. “Could I trouble you to help me with a special service?”

In her hands is a skirt with blood splattered down the front. Her sheepish expression conveys everything an attendant would need to know, but Kiyoomi is nothing if not meticulous.

No one else is in the laundromat, so he inquires, “How special?”

Her smile sharpens. “I need there to be no evidence. This is one of my favorites, after all.”

Kiyoomi always wears gloves when he’s at work, so he has no qualms about taking the skirt from her. “Understood. I’ll take care of this.”

Appearances can be deceiving. The underground organizations in Tokyo may not be as visibly influential as those in a city like Yokohama, but Komori Cleaners is never short of work. Their regulars often come every week for months before disappearing; this university student has used the laundromat ever since the semester started, but she will inevitably move away without a trace. Kiyoomi doesn’t get attached to the patrons. He knows better than to affiliate himself with anyone other than family.

This is her first time asking for special services. As the sink fills with water, he idly wonders what could have gone wrong. The stain is less than four days old, but the skirt can’t be bleached. He might need to keep it overnight to remove all discoloration. For now, he’ll let it soak.

As he emerges from the back room to tell her as much, the door chime beeps. In strolls a new customer with bleached blond hair and a duffle bag presumably holding his dirty laundry. Kiyoomi wrinkles his nose under his face mask; sports bags collect dirt and germs. The university student doesn’t appear to have the same idea, at least outwardly. She sneaks an obvious glance up from her phone and titters. The man winks at her, eliciting a coy grin. Even so, he opens the washing machine farthest away from the one she’s waiting by.

“Is it bad?” she asks Kiyoomi.

He shrugs. “I may need to clean it a few times. I’ll look at it again before you leave.”

“Thank you so much. I was really worried that I’d ruined it.” Her phone dings with a text notification, which she checks without opening. “Oh… something I asked to be put on order arrived early. Could I trouble you to watch my clothes for a moment? The store’s right around the corner.”

No one steals from Komori Cleaners, but Kiyoomi nods anyway. He resigns himself to hovering in the corner until she returns.

As soon as she leaves, the man with the duffle bag looks over. “‘Scuse me. A friend of mine said that this place provides special services. Do ya happen to clean blood?” He smirks easily. “My brother cut himself cooking.”

Kiyoomi looks askance at the unopened pocket of the duffle bag. “We do. By the way, we have a special discount for customers who come here eight times or more.”

“Oh, d’ya really want to see me again that badly,” a glance at his nametag, “Omi-kun?”

Among all the personalities that people in that certain line of work adopt, this is by far the most annoying. Kiyoomi lets his eyebrow twitch. “‘Anything that appears can be made to disappear.’”

“Wise words.”

“It’s the company motto.” He rolls his wrists. “Everything can be cleaned off the face of the Earth-- stains. Smells. People.”

The man tilts his head, eyes narrowed into a vulpine threat. “Is that so?” He reminds Kiyoomi of someone-- a classmate, maybe.

The door chime beeps. The university student walks in, a plastic bag hanging from her arm.

The man grins cheekily, and the moment of tension dissolves. “Well, I guess I’ll be seeing ya more often, Omi-kun.”

Kiyoomi makes a noncommittal noise and busies himself with checking on the skirt in the back room.

* * *

The man’s name is Miya-- the one he answers to at the laundromat, anyway. The dry cleaning service at Komori Cleaners gives numbered tickets out instead of marking clothing with identifying information, but Miya insists on adding his name to the order. He claims that he’ll lose his slip of paper. Kiyoomi is almost inclined to believe him, but the only customers who make their presence at this laundromat known-and-timestamped are people in need of an alibi.

It doesn’t matter. Kiyoomi isn’t paid to judge the patrons, nor is he paid to remember their names.

He does stare at the messy _kanji_ on the hanger marker and wonder how someone in the business of death can be named after a shrine.

* * *

On a December evening before winter break, a day with the temperature lingering low enough to warrant a scarf, Miya requests an extra special service from Komori Cleaners. Motoya is on duty with Kiyoomi; they leave Kiyoomi’s oldest sister in charge of the laundromat. She would usually go with Motoya, but she suspects that she’s pregnant, and Kiyoomi needs the experience anyway.

He doesn’t _need it_. He deals with the university student’s bloodstained pants and the delicates of the prostitutes who live in the area. He knows how to make mystery powders drain into the sink. Patrons recognize him enough to wave as they pass by on the street-- so he’s safe to some extent. He doesn’t need to immerse himself in the night like this.

Motoya stops in front of an alley next to a nightclub. “Well, at least we didn’t have to ask for a more specific location.”

Kiyoomi frowns so deeply that he feels his mask around his mouth. “He didn’t have to make such a mess.”

The body-- tall, muscular build, most likely a bouncer-- lies slumped against the wall, having left a smear of red in its wake. The lamp and security camera outside the side door to the nightclub are both smashed in. It looks like the lightbulb was shattered over the body’s head. It also looks like Miya dragged the body across the alley like a child trying to mop the floor with a dirty cloth.

“I’m surprised no one called the police yet,” Motoya remarks. “Lucky!”

“The doors are barred,” drones Kiyoomi. He picks at his gloves to triple-check that they won’t slip off. They won’t. He inhales and exhales.

Then, Komori Cleaners gets to work.

* * *

At the beginning of January, Kiyoomi meets Miya Osamu. Osamu is one year older than him and accordingly ahead in his studies, but they reach for the same book at the library. Osamu stops first. Kiyoomi retracts his hand because he stops, wondering if he’s found a kindred spirit.

No, he was mistaken. “D’ya work at the cleaners by any chance?” He and Miya-- the other one-- have the same accent and the same face.

“Yes,” answers Kiyoomi. To be polite, he adds, “I hope you didn’t cut yourself too badly that one time.”

The man with unbleached hair grins crookedly. “Nah. I’m used to accidents like that anyway. I’m gonna open a restaurant after graduation.”

The shirt that Miya-- the blond one-- brought in that night had a blood-red rose stain blooming on the upper left sleeve.

“Miya Osamu,” he says. “If ya want, ya can have the book first.”

“Sakusa Kiyoomi. Thank you. I won’t need it for long.”

* * *

It takes a stupidly large ego to give the underworld your real name, Kiyoomi later muses. Then again, he doesn’t use a pseudonym at work. There’s no need to; anything that appears can be made to disappear. His parents are going to erase their daughter from the company registrar before the baby is born. It’ll be like she never existed-- but that’s silly to think. Kiyoomi will visit her when he doesn’t have class or work. She’ll make him _omurice_ like always. He’ll listen to her complaints about this-and-that and offer interested silence in return.

“Are you excited to be an uncle, Kiyoomi?” Motoya asks as they’re removing brain matter from a sidewalk.

Kiyoomi, who likes to separate his work and personal lives, doesn’t dignify him with an answer. He focuses his irritation at Miya-- for leaving evidence on the concrete, among various other offenses-- into scrubbing. The body-- middle aged, purposefully feminine-- sprawled on the ground beyond the splatter, of course, doesn’t criticize his taciturnity. Neither does Motoya. He and Kiyoomi grew up together, so he knows when to let him stew in his thoughts.

He’s thinking about the kind of stew that Osamu made Miya for dinner, a dish so delicious that Miya had to mention it while doing his laundry one night. The more Miya forces interaction, the more Kiyoomi suspects that he's more transparent about himself than should be reasonable for an--

Motoya makes a questioning noise. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re making a face. Is it the sound?” As if to prove his point, he uses his cleaning tool to poke at a chunk of fleshy gray matter. It squishes horribly.

“It’s nothing,” he repeats with more force.

It’s against the rules to label the patrons with certain words. Hence, the list has been burned into the back of Kiyoomi’s mind since childhood:

_Hitman.  
Assassin.  
Hired killer.  
Murderer._

Following the same detached principle, the objects that they clean out of sight are none of the following:

_Corpses.  
Remains.  
Victims._

A particle has no corporeal dimensions and therefore cannot be rotated-- so paraphrases Kiyoomi’s notes. A body can be rearranged, relocated, and eviscerated. A stain can be purged. Anything that appears can be made to disappear.

Figuratively clearing the site-- not _crime scene_ \-- is not Komori Cleaners’s responsibility; arrangements for witness removal, patron extraction, and police ignorance are left to the patron or patron’s sponsor. Komori Cleaners provides special services. Komori Cleaners and its affiliated employees do not create messes. Kiyoomi memorized and internalized these policies long before he was hired to work at the laundromat. What happens to the patron is none of his concern, but any paid-for services will be provided whether or not the patron is around to witness their furnishing.

The university student hasn’t returned since before winter break. Maybe she was a guest student for the semester. In all likelihood, she’s gone back to her home school. The impersonally cheerful walls of Komori Cleaners are painted with white lies.

* * *

“Hey, Omi-kun. Aren’tcha missing out on fun uni stuff by working here?” Miya queries one night while a washing machine cycles through his clothes. He’s leaning against the adjacent drier unit despite being far too tall for it to be comfortable.

Kiyoomi, refusing to get any closer, stretches over from the other side of the row to wipe down the top of the machine. “That depends on your definition of ‘fun uni stuff.’”

At this angle, Miya looks down at him. “Y’know, parties and petty crimes and shit. Whatever the hell uni kids do.”

“I don’t know what your university experience was like, but--”

“Didn’t go,” he interjects with a lazy roll of his shoulders.

“That explains things.”

A squawk. “What things?”

In a moment of unexpected-- though not unprecedented-- unprofessionalism, Kiyoomi shrugs. “I assumed Osamu-san was the one with the brain cells between you two.”

Miya makes a face. “Hey, Samu’s as stupid as me! He’s just better at hiding it.” He squints-- up, now-- at Kiyoomi. “Since when did ya know each other, anyway?”

“We go to the same school.”

He shakes his head, incredulous. “Well, if yer gonna call him ‘Osamu-san,’ ya might as well call me Atsumu. Everyone who knows us does.”

“Miya Atsumu,” Kiyoomi mutters. Both twins are aptly named. One of them should invest in an alias.

Miya-- Atsumu-- tilts his head expectantly. He’s been reading the same paragraph of the same article for the last few minutes.

Kiyoomi evaluates him-- selectively muscular like an athlete, sharp-eyed, genuine-- and pulls his mask down for a second to snap, “You could be cleaner at work.”

He retreats back to the attendant counter, but not before Atsumu gapes like a fish. Motoya beams. Kiyoomi ignores him.

* * *

Rotting fish and decaying bodies smell different. This distinction shouldn’t be a surprise to most people, but it seems that the owners of this seafood market are unaware of the fact. Kiyoomi makes Motoya clear away the wasted food while he watches from a safe distance.

“Don’t be so picky, Kiyoomi,” his sister chides, her bemusement palpable even through the cracked-open window of the van. When Kiyoomi was younger, their currently-pregnant sister used to make _omurice_ without ketchup because she didn’t like tomatoes.

It doesn’t matter if Kiyoomi is picky; he’ll always be the fussy baby brother of the family. He’s so much younger than his sisters that they don’t tease him about his completely-absent love life-- and Motoya does all the teasing for them anyway.

Wakatoshi says that love is something to realize all of a sudden, not something to be chased after. He met his fiancé while on a shift in his grandmother’s little herb store. Wakatoshi’s grandmother doesn’t use Komori Cleaners, but she sells special remedies to the patrons. Her garden smells like summer and a warning to his absent father.

Atsumu smells like the laundry detergent he uses and cheap three-in-one shampoo. Sometimes, at particularly late hours, he comes in with wet hair because he doesn’t want to over-dry his hair. Atsumu doesn't seem to understand that standing in the laundromat at 3 AM is for cleaning his clothes, not asking Kiyoomi whether he would fight ten horse-sized ducks or a hundred duck-sized horses.

“I’m a cleaner, not a fighter,” is what he ends up saying-- not of his own volition, to be honest, but he can’t resist that persistent, taunting gaze.

“Alright then,” drawls Atsumu, who looks up from his phone for once, “if that ever happens, I’ll protect ya.”

Naturally, Kiyoomi has never fought anyone, but there have been uncomfortable times when patrons have left bodies a bit more alive than expected. His oldest sister usually handles those situations. She used to feed stray cats and then put them down when they were beyond help. Kiyoomi remembers that she did the same thing for his pet chicken.

He makes his default unimpressed face, the one that Motoya laughs at because it made him look so serious as a child. “You, protect me?”

In return, Atsumu increases his smugness tenfold. “Don’t believe me?”

“I would sooner ask one of my professors for help.”

“What are ya studying, anyway?”

Kiyoomi walks around him so he can start wiping one of the driers down. “Cognitive science.”

“Why?”

As someone whose mind imposes artificial boundaries on the world, he wants to know how people process their surroundings-- perhaps forcing comfort, or perhaps never adjusting at all. Kiyoomi needs control. What do other people require to feel complete?

“I want to know how people think,” he says instead of spitting back his university application. “Don’t you?”

“Most of the people I meet are thinking ‘oh shit,’” Atsumu remarks with a sly wink.

_Many of the people you meet end up dead._ The retort sits heavy in Kiyoomi’s mouth. “Is it followed by ‘that looks like trouble’?”

“Or ‘he’s hot.’”

Today, Atsumu is wearing a black turtleneck that clings around the shoulders and back. He runs his tongue along the bottom of his front teeth when he sees a funny meme but doesn’t want to laugh. It’s annoying. It’s unbearably attractive.

Actually, no. There’s a piece of lint clinging to the shirt.

“Are ya thinking that right now, Omi-kun?”

Kiyoomi levels a blank stare at him. “That you look like trouble? Yes.”

Atsumu has the audacity to wink again. “Ya know ya love it.”

Kiyoomi does not like trouble. He likes cleaning it up. If he could just take a lint roller to that damn turtleneck--

“I'm serious, yanno. If ya ever need help, just ask.” Atsumu stuffs his hands in his pockets and grins wryly. “The gods know how much I owe ya.”

“You're a customer,” Kiyoomi replies as gently as he can.

The drier buzzes. Atsumu reaches for his duffle. “Thanks for the company, Omi-kun.”

Even though Kiyoomi has no such obligation to the patrons, he lingers there until Atsumu leaves.

* * *

Wakatoshi's grandmother sells soap in the winter before the flowers bloom. Each bar is tied with twine and ornamented with a pair of dried leaves to match the scent to a plant. She makes most of it herself, painstakingly clearing the veranda so she can work with lye in the open air. Whenever Wakatoshi delivers packages to Komori Cleaners, he brings Kiyoomi a sample from her newest batch.

The box is pretty and white in Kiyoomi's hands. His eyes trace the creases in the wrapping where her hands trembled. “Wakatoshi-kun.”

“Hm?”

“What is love?”

“Love is a language,” he says. His answer has changed after years of experience. “It is something to learn and practice.”

“I see.”

Although English has been imposed upon the world as a language that transcends borders, Kiyoomi still stumbles over the syllables. His professors have convinced him that words aren't how humans express their most essential sentiments. Something as simple as a plate of cut fruit can evoke all the feelings that a speech struggles to convey.

Wakatoshi inclines his head kindly. “What is your love language, Kiyoomi-kun?”

He picks at the tape on the box, smoothing back the paper to frame the cardboard. “Soap.”

For birthdays, boy's days, and other gift-giving occasions, Kiyoomi's sisters buy him soap molds. In return, he melt-and-pours them pretty little cleaning bars to take on bath house trips and show off to their friends. His apartment doesn't have good enough ventilation to use lye.

“Hey, Atsumu.”

“Yeah?”

He's not an artisan like Wakatoshi's grandmother; the leaf-shaped bar is left unmarked and perfunctorily wrapped in paper. It looks like a paperweight on the stark white machine.

Atsumu doesn't move to pick it up. “What's this?”

Kiyoomi finds himself unable to meet his eyes. “Soap. It smells like bergamot.”

Bergamot almost has the citrusy sweetness of cleaning products. The bergamot orange, unrelated to the perennial plant, blooms in the winter. Kiyoomi never gets to smell the live flowers because he refuses to take his mask off outdoors during flu season.

“Are ya being passive-aggressive or something?”

“If you smelled bad, I would tell you.” That’s the truth. “I made it.” Also true. Kiyoomi is nothing if not honest.

“Yer weird, Omi-kun,” Atsumu remarks, but he’s smiling as he picks it up. “Thanks. What’s the occasion?”

He shrugs.

“Promise ya don’t hate me?”

“Fine,” Kiyoomi mutters, suppressing a smile of his own. “I don’t hate you, Atsumu. I promise.”

“That’s all I needed to hear.”

The washing machine hums merrily.

* * *

Atsumu doesn’t show up the next week, nor the next. Kiyoomi keeps a professional distance from the matter. He avoids Osamu as much as he can.

He graduates. He enrolls in graduate school. His parents remove him from the Komori Cleaners registrar.

Anything that appears can be made to disappear.


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gratuitous Oikawa.

Kiyoomi’s lab-- his by right of use-- is one ventilation system away from being a cleanroom. His next-door neighbor’s, by contrast, is a high school chemistry classroom. This somehow does not deter them from being relatively close associates in the non-professional sense. Motoya always comments on their friendship with a proud smile.

“Sakusa-chan, you can’t deny it,” Oikawa hums, playing with his phone like the teenager he is on the inside. “You’re upset because you don’t have anyone to use the childcare program with.”

“I think Iwaizumi-san was referring to you when he said that you two needed it.”

“He doesn’t trust me. Do you know what he said yesterday? ‘If we have a kid, I’m not letting you name them, because you’ll call them Riken or something like that.’ Can you believe him?

“I would never name our child Riken. Isn't Riken that one character from _Water Emblem Awakening_?”

Kiyoomi finishes his lunch before answering, “RIKEN is the institute that we work for.” They both, on the whole, enjoy their jobs.

Oikawa gives him a look of pity and vague exasperation. “You’re really friends with Ushiwaka, huh.”

Wakatoshi is currently in France, where he lives with his husband. He now tends to an herb garden of his own. Oikawa has somewhat of a personal vendetta against him-- not that Kiyoomi gets involved in spats like that.

“I’m not upset. I always spend Valentine’s Day working.”

The look is more exasperation than pity this time. “Come on, Sakusa-chan,” he cajoles. “You're not a bad-looking guy. I'm sure you could find someone to go on a date with. What about that new research assistant in the neurodiversity lab? They're around your age.”

“Too new. They moved from America last month.” It’s impolite to ask out new colleagues, especially people who are new to the country in general. “I’ll be in Kobe that week anyway.”

“Oh, right. Your collaborative project,” Oikawa sighs like he’s referring to a group assignment in grade school in which Kiyoomi would do most of the work. “Knowing you, you’ll barely leave the lab. At least go to Frantz or something like that.”

Kiyoomi allows himself a smirk upon noticing the verbal tic that definitely came from Iwaizumi. He shrugs. “I’ll get truffles for you and Iwaizumi-san.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

* * *

On February 13th, feeling slightly ridiculous, Kiyoomi buys a box of strawberry truffles from Frantz and packs it in his suitcase. He eats lunch with the laboratory head who he’s sharing his research with; she’s married, like Oikawa, but she doesn’t comment on his single status because she’s not a nosy prick like him. They make good progress on their work. It’s all he could ask for.

“You should try this restaurant for lunch tomorrow, Sakusa-san,” she chimes at the end of the day. Like many of the other researchers, she’s taking a paid day off for Valentine’s. “The food comes wrapped if you order takeout.”

“Thank you for your consideration.”

She smiles as she sends him the address. “You could also eat there. Don’t work too hard.”

He nods wryly. Now that he’s learning at the pace of science rather than a class, he can’t always rush the completion of a project by working overtime. If half of his staff and his co-lead are on vacation, there’s nothing he can do ahead of schedule-- except clean, of course, but he can only scrub the premises so many times before someone well-intentioned reminds him that the janitorial staff exist.

On February 14th, Kiyoomi finds himself standing in front of the original Onigiri Miya. A promotional chalkboard sits in front of the store, listing flavors that will rotate out of season at the end of the week. It looks crowded in there; he lingers outside.

A pair of high school girls exits the shop. One of them-- petite, bold for her age-- is giggling. “We're so lucky, Rina-chan. It's Valentine's Day, and we got to see the owner himself!”

“Isn't he way older than us? And isn't he married, anyways?” The other girl, Rina, purses her lips. “Shouldn't he be at home?”

“But he's so hot!”

“You have such a one-track mind. How would you feel if…”

Kiyoomi pushes the door open with a sleeved hand.

The restaurant contains more booths than tables, some chairs pulled up to the booths so that clusters of students can squeeze together. Stools line the counter that holds the register at one end, giving patrons a partial view of the kitchen. One seat has been placed as close to the register as possible. The customer there is in conversation with an employee.

 _“Irasshaimasu,”_ calls the man behind the counter. At this, the person sitting in front of him also turns to look at the door.

They are twins, Osamu and Atsumu, with identical expressions of surprise. Osamu wears an onigiri-themed uniform, shoulders broad and strong from lifting bags of rice. Atsumu's tight-fitting jacket betrays his similar physical fitness. Kiyoomi hovers by the door.

If he stops paying attention, the buzz of chatter from the other customers fades into a dull hum not unlike that of a running washing machine.

“Come sit, Omi-kun,” Atsumu coaxes in a feeble attempt at casualness. “I'll buy ya lunch. Ya like umeboshi, right?”

“I do.” He sits. Osamu files off to fill the order.

Atsumu smells like bergamot. Kiyoomi smiles subconsciously.

“So,” begins Atsumu, fidgeting with his napkin.

“So,” he echoes.

“Whaddya do nowadays?”

This is a question that Kiyoomi has answered dozens of times, repackaged in different words. He shouldn't hesitate to answer, “I'm a researcher at the RIKEN campus in Wako. And you?” He still does, if only for a second.

“I work for the government.”

“Oh, what a coincidence. So do I.”

Atsumu scowls. “I know, asshole. I’ve been to the RIKEN campus here for work.”

“What a coincidence,” Kiyoomi repeats so he at least appears to be keeping up his end of the conversation. “I’m working there this week.”

“Huh. What a coincidence,” he teases with an easily curving smirk. “I’m allowed to give you my phone number now.”

“Are you asking me out, Atsumu?”

“Maybe. Do you want me to?”

Kiyoomi considers. As he understands, it’s unsafe to be affiliated with someone whose life is in questionable danger. He doesn’t know where Atsumu is based, if such a place exists, or how far apart they will work in the future. He doesn’t know how they have changed since Komori Cleaners was their mutual haunt, and he can’t predict how they will change. Almost everything is out of his control.

“I do,” he says anyway. It’s the truth.

Atsumu smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if I keep mentioning cleanrooms everywhere in my fics (I'm not sure if that's a trend in the ones I've posted, but I digress). I'm really obsessed with the idea of a room being clean by design and the science/engineering that goes on in there.
> 
> I understand that Ricken's Japanese name has nothing to do with "riken," but oh well. Maybe Water Emblem is an AU game series. Maybe I will make it for my programming final project. Who knows.
> 
> RIKEN is real. If you're interested in scientific research, it has quite an interesting website.


End file.
